The old bones are gone. So are the construction cranes. What’s left in Charles Pratt Dormitory, previously home to the college’s Museum of Natural History, is a living and learning space for 111 lucky first-years, with ample room for studying, gathering and recharging.
The main common area, with its two-story window, is large enough to accommodate all of the dorm’s residents, who first put the space to use during a dorm meeting on move-in day in August. A large room in the basement has already been used for a first-year barbeque that featured bands and an a cappella group. “It feels very community-oriented,” Josh Nathan ’10, a resident counselor in the dorm, says of the building. “And there are tons of small, cozy nooks that are great for sitting down with a book or a laptop.” Academic Peer Mentors seem to be a constant presence in the second-floor study room, Nathan adds. The dorm also houses the college’s Writing Center.
In 2006, Charles Pratt’s former tenants—the mastodon and woolly mammoth skeletons, along with the rest of the natural history collection—upgraded to the new Earth Sciences and Museum of Natural History Building. Now the first floor has a three-story lobby and a vaulted glass ceiling. Holding up all that glass are the building’s original richly stained, hand-carved, solid wood beams, around which the main stairwell winds itself. (Potential climbers, beware: the beams are protected with laser security sensors.) The rooms are equally impressive: there are a number of split-level doubles, each of which has a six-step stairwell and a partial wall for privacy.
The renovation, or re-creation, of Charles Pratt fulfills the first of two main goals of the Residential Master Plan: to bring all first-year housing onto the Main Quadrangle. The other goal is to update all dorms to include modern, energy-efficient mechanical, electrical, plumbing and heating systems, and to improve wheelchair accessibility. Charles Pratt is now among the dorms that have energy-saving washers and dryers, a heat-reclaiming system and high-efficiency shower heads and lighting, among other features. In addition to the dormitory improvements, a solar panel array was recently installed on the roof of President Anthony W. Marx’s house, further increasing the energy savings.
